February 1, 2003
by Gildir
Summary: An unexpected assortment of fictional characters react to the news of the Columbia tragedy. A series of vignettes.
1. Chapter 1

**2/1/03**

Author's note: This is my first story posted here, but that's no reason to be particularly kind in reviewing it. I actually started writing it on February 1, 2003, but broke off partway through and didn't continue it until September 2006. Some readers may wish to guess where the break in composition occurred.

For artistic reasons, I avoided mentioning the copyrighted characters who appear in the middle scenes of the story by name. (The characters in the first and last scenes are in the public domain.) These characters are identified in the copyright disclaimer at the end of the story.

The first sentence of the story was borrowed (with permission) from my best friend, who once suggested to me that it would be the perfect opening for a story about the characters in question.

**I**

Ozma gazed out of the window of her breakfast room and sighed.

It had happened in the middle of the night in Oz. When Ozma awoke, before breakfast she had checked the Magic Picture to see what was happening in the Great Outside World. She had always done that occasionally; since the horror seventeen months earlier she had done it twice a day. Twice a day, that is, when she wasn't wrapped up in some hectic but delightful adventure.

Is Oz, every journey, every quest, ended safely and triumphantly. Good was stronger than Evil. There was no disease, no famine, no lasting sorrow.

No death.

Oz was unique.

The people of Oz had a strong emotional attachment, Ozma knew, to the people of the United States of America. This was not surprising. Dorothy Gale was an American girl, and she had liberated the Munchkins and Winkies from tyranny, more than a century ago now. Billina was an American hen, and she had saved Ozma from perpetual enchantment in the Nome King's palace. Oz would have been a far less happy place if it weren't for Americans.

There was more to the relationship than this, though, Ozma had often thought. Oz was like the United States reflected in a bright mirror. It was what America could be if the people were nice to each other, if their culture encouraged the intellectual growth of their citizens so they could solve the problems of life.

When the Royal Historian had begun his History, she had hoped that the example of Oz could make the United States a happier place. But how could any nation be happy when there was so much tragedy, so much horror, in its history and that of the world around it? Each new sorrow, whether large or small, must add to the burden in the hearts of the people of America.

She looked out the window again. The summer sunshine, the birdsong, seemed inappropriate to the day. She passed her hand wearily over her face.

She needed to talk to someone about this. She rang the bell to summon Jellia.

Jellia Jamb, Ozma's personal maid as well as the head of the housekeeping staff for the entire palace, entered the room. Despite herself, Ozma smiled. Jellia's face always seemed to bear the same pert expression; her apron was always perfectly starched.

"What is it, Ozma?" Jellia asked, her voice filling with concern as she saw the look on Ozma's face.

"There's been another tragedy in America," Ozma said.

Jellia's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, no," she said. "What happened? Was it terrorism?"

"No," Ozma said with a sigh, "no, they don't think so. Sit down."

So Jellia sat down, and Ozma told her what had happened. The details were still sketchy, of course.

"How sad," said Jellia. "How terrible. Even when only – 'only' – seven people die, it can still be a national tragedy for them."

"Even the death of one person can be a world tragedy," said Ozma, "depending on who it is."

They sat in silence, remembering 1963.

"What will you tell the people?" Jellia asked. "They love the United States."

"I'm still thinking about it," said Ozma. "I want to return to the Magic Picture and see more of what's happening in Texas and Florida."

**II**

He awoke in his house in Florida at 10 AM. He had overslept badly; he should have been out greeting the people on the streets. But there were fewer there each day now than there used to be. Nothing had been the same for these last seventeen months.

He was awakened by a knock on the door. Putting on his bathrobe, a corporate product emblazoned with multiple silhouettes of his head, he stumbled to the door and opened it.

She stood there, the love of his life, her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his heart sinking.

"The space shuttle _Columbia_," she gasped, opening and shutting her eyes. "It crashed in Texas. It was heading for a landing here in Florida."

"Was everyone killed?" he asked in horror.

She nodded, unable to speak.

"Was it terrorism?" he asked.

"No," she said. "No, they don't think so."

He nodded and bowed his head. Then he glanced at the air above her head, half expecting to see an image there of her heart breaking. Such things were not quite impossible, not for their kind.

He himself felt a curious absence of emotion. He remembered feeling the same way when he heard of Walt's death, more than thirty-six years ago now. It meant that he was still in shock; that he had not yet accepted what had happened emotionally, that he had not yet accepted its place in the tapestry of sorrows and joys that formed his country's past.

"Shall we sit down?" he asked into the silence.

She nodded again.

They sat next to each other on the sofa, holding hands. He remembered how proud he had been, how proud of America and humanity, when _Columbia_ made the first space shuttle flight. That was in the same decade that the second Florida park had opened; the decade Michael and his colleagues had saved the company. It was also the decade that the shuttle _Challenger_ had exploded, a sorrow that was now reawakened and intensified by this new sorrow.

But the 1980's now seemed a far more innocent time, a time of happy and hopeful beginnings. No one had had to ask if _Challenger_ had been the target of terrorists. They had not had to wonder, each moment they were in the parks, whether that moment would be their last; whether a terrorist would blow himself up and kill them, and the children clustered around them.

The children.

"What will we do for the children?" he asked. "What can we do? We can't even speak to them, in case our voices don't sound like they imagine. Children love spaceships and dinosaurs more than most adults; they care more about the past and the future…"

"We can hug them," she said. "We can dance for them. We can remind them that they are children, and we are here because Walt asked us to try to make them happy."

They sat in silence for another minute or two.

"I should call Michael, to ask if I can help the company respond," he said.

As he picked up his cell phone from a table and began dialing the CEO's home number – it was only 7:15 in California, and he would probably be the one to tell his boss – tears began to prick in his large round eyes.

**III**

There were tears in her eyes. That was rare. She wasn't usually a very emotional person. Or rather, because she wanted to be happy all the time, she generally ended up being angry all the time. Only rarely was she sad.

Her brother had told her. He was sad. He was much more intelligent than she was (she readily admitted this to herself, although she would never admit it to him), and his broad range of interests included theology, philosophy, literature… and astronomy and space exploration. He told her what had happened, with tears in his serious eyes, a catch in his slightly lisping voice.

And she had slugged him.

Why? Why had she done it? Everyone knew that she had slugged him often enough in the past. Almost always she had treated him terribly, and yet he had always loved her.

But why today? He was sad, crying, and she had hit him. He had stared at her in silence, as if she had committed the ultimate betrayal. Then he had put on his coat and left the house. He had told their mother simply that he needed to be with his friends, that he was going over to the house of the manager of their Little League team. She had heard the door close behind him.

She stood scowling, restraining her urge to kick the furniture around her. She was usually able to restrain herself better now than she did formerly. Her childhood seemed to be lasting forever, but next fall she would finally be going to middle school. She was, however slowly, growing up.

Now she could hear the tragic news coming from the radio in the kitchen, floating on the air through the house. Their younger brother was very upset; Dad was playing a game with him, trying to calm him down. Mom was washing dishes in the kitchen.

Should she apologize to him? How could she apologize for something when she didn't understand why she had done it herself?

Why was she so angry? Could it be that it was because she, too, was sad?

And that thought made tears come to her eyes.

She told Mom she was following her brother to the manager's house. Her mother nodded and reminded her to put her coat on.

The little girl knew she was very lucky to be able to walk to a friend's house by herself. Her town was so small and sleepy that it was like a throwback to a simpler time in America. Even so, some of the kids at school weren't allowed to go out by themselves. The world was changing, especially since the terrorism seventeen months ago.

Terrorism. Was this terrorism? She didn't even know, hadn't listened properly to the radio. It didn't seem likely from what little she knew about the space shuttle, but nothing was unthinkable anymore. She felt sick. She had said once that she wanted no "downs" in her life, only "ups and ups and ups!" Why should she have to live through so much tragedy in the world? Why her?

But she was not a totally selfish person. Even as she thought this, she realized how horrible it sounded. "Why me?" What had happened to her? Nothing had changed for the worse in her own life. She still had a home, two parents who loved her, and –

And two brothers. And they loved her, too. And she had slugged one of them, on this day of all days.

She shuddered, pulled her coat about herself and quickened her pace. The houses along the street looked unreal, insubstantial, like – like drawings that had never been drawn.

These past two or three years, she had sometimes had the feeling that she, her brothers, their friends and neighbors and their whole town had ceased to exist, but no one had told them. The feeling that they had no continuing existence, but were only beautiful memories in other people's minds.

She shivered again.

Why did she feel so angry, and sad, and guilty? Yes – that was her strongest emotion – guilt. Guilt at having hit her brother, guilt at having made him feel worse when he was sad already.

She saw the manager's house ahead of her. She quickened her steps again. The emotions pulsing within her made her feel terrible. Why must she feel so terrible?

Again her better nature, so often suppressed or ignored, chastised her. Why was she thinking only of her own feelings, or, at best, of her own guilt about her brother? Seven people had died. Their families would be devastated. Millions of people around the world would mourn them. This was, indeed, another terrible day in her nation's history, in a time that was already somber enough. Why could she think of no one but herself?

She had received so much love from her parents, her grandparents and her brothers. Even her friends, whom she must annoy so much sometimes, almost always seemed happy to have her around. If she had received so much love, why could she not give it? Was it all wadded up in her heart like a spitball?

But she had fallen again into the trap of thinking about herself; "I, my, me." If she did not want to consider herself a completely selfish person, she would have to force herself to think, not about herself or her brother, but the astronauts.

So she willed herself to think about them. But her mind remained a blank. She knew nothing about them, she realized. She didn't even know their names. Had the radio said one of them was from Israel? Did that make terrorism more likely?

Then she saw a contrail in the sky above her. She glanced up at it quickly, startled. She remembered the images she had seen when she peeked at the TV before leaving the house: debris falling through the air above Texas. She remembered the picture of the _Challenger_ explosion she had seen in one of her brother's books. And she remembered September 11.

And then she wept unselfishly.

She was dimly aware of her brother emerging from the manager's house and walking toward her. As always, he was carrying his security blanket, but, surprisingly, he was holding it more loosely than usual. He looked very young. She remembered her secret pride when he won second prize in the school contest to make a model of the space station.

She had to admit to herself that he was her favorite person in the world.

"Are you sad?" he asked when he reached her.

She nodded.

He hugged her.

"Let's go for a walk," he said.

They walked around the manager's house and into the backyard. There was the dog, lying atop the doghouse as so often. He seemed to be asleep, but the fur on his face was wet – with tears? He murmured and whined in his sleep.

Her brother squeezed her hand as they passed the doghouse. And for the first and last time in her childhood, she thought she could understand what the dog was saying in his troubled dreams:

"NASA… America… 1967… 1986… 2003… the past… the future… Why?... Why?"

**IV**

"Why?" he asked himself. "Why?"

He was sitting atop Mount Rushmore. When he had heard the horrible news he had flown here to connect with his emotions, and to connect with the history of his adopted world and nation. A history both wonderful, as in the great achievements of the Presidents sculpted beneath him, and terrible. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. The sculptor of Mount Rushmore had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

"None of us were there," he said. "There are thousands of us on Earth who could have helped, and, just like seventeen months ago, none of us were there."

He imagined himself floating above the Earth, surrounded by the wonder and the beauty of space. The powers he had been granted by fate rendered him immune to the dangers of that environment, where an ordinary human's unprotected flesh would freeze or burn while his blood boiled.

The people who explored that frontier had always been among his personal heroes. He knew all too well from his day job that their exploits had long ceased to be of vital interest to the news media. "No one cares about NASA any more," his editor had said when he proposed a feature story on the recent space shuttle missions. "Too much to worry about here on Earth."

Well, they would care today. And unlike 1986, when many people knew the names of the dead astronauts because of Christa McAuliffe's presence on the mission, most Americans would be hearing the names of the dead for the first time. They should have been heroes, but they were strangers. He couldn't remember seeing anything about this mission in his newspaper; perhaps it had been an item buried on page D8. It would be on the front page tomorrow.

Even to his supernormal senses, the flash of red, white and blue was almost subliminal. And then there were two people sitting on Mount Rushmore.

"It was not terrorism," she said. "Oracle says NASA engineers have been e-mailing back and forth for days about a piece of foam that fell from the external tank during launch. They didn't think it posed a serious danger."

Her blue eyes were sad, but he had seen them sadder. Even the champions of the gods knew great sorrow. His wife might not have liked the amount of comfort he drew from those eyes, but she understood it. Those who could withstand their gaze could scarcely turn away from it. His wife herself was no exception.

"Not terrorism," he repeated. "That's some comfort."

"A cold comfort," she replied.

They sat silently, gazing down at the valley below them, at the visitors arriving at the national monument by car. From hundreds of feet below he could hear the tourists' conversations, the sorrow in the children's voices, and the one word that was repeated over and over. _Columbia_.

"I don't know how we can speak about these things any more without lapsing into clichés," he said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. "The astronauts were greater heroes than we are. The firefighters and police officers who died on 9/11 were greater heroes than we are. Everyone knows that. But do they believe it? Do they prefer true courage to flashy costumes and amazing powers?"

"People turn to our exploits for comfort," she said. "They want to believe that someone strong will always be there to save them."

"None of us were there today," he said. "If I had known it was happening, as it was happening…"

"No one can be everywhere all the time," she replied, gazing calmly into his eyes again. "Not even you. Not even me."

After a moment his gaze dropped.

"This must be especially difficult for you," he said softly. "I know the footage of the shuttle burning through the sky must remind you of what happened to your –"

For an instant her lineless forehead was creased with pain.

"I am not ready to speak about that, not yet," she said, her voice still calm. "I am here to help you."

"I know," he said. "You must have known I would wish I was there."

"Yes, I thought of that," she said. "But that wasn't my first thought."

She laid her hand on his shoulder.

"I thought of my friend, the nerdy newspaper reporter who idolizes astronauts," she said. "I knew he would have a hard time thinking through his emotions to write about them. I thought he might need some help."

He closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, he was calmer. He spoke in a different voice, higher, less resonant.

"'Today America and the world lost seven heroes,'" he said. "'The word "hero" has been controversial of late. In the wake of 9/11, many have criticized its application to sports stars, popular singers and metahumans. But no one can deny that it is the best word to describe the crew of STS-107…'"

His voice echoed from the bare rock, sounding distant to his own ears.


	2. Chapter 2

**V**

The tall man frowned. He flicked switches on the hexagonal console, glancing up at a video screen which showed only static.

"What are you trying to do now?" the young woman next to him asked, a hint of exasperation in her tone. Her attractive features were Indian, but she spoke with an English accent. "Tuning in to Ally Pally?"

"No, no, no," the man replied, his long brown hair flapping around his face as he whirled to look at her, his piercing blue eyes somber. "Tuning in to the news."

"The news, did you say? How boring." Another man, shorter and more raffish-looking, entered the cavernous room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Why can't we watch Daniel Craig in _Silverball_?"

"Silverball? Is that a Bond film? I don't remember Daniel Craig playing Bond," the woman said.

"He hasn't yet in your time," the tall man said absently, still flicking switches. "But I'm looking for something more tragic."

"More tragic than his Bond fandom?" the woman muttered. "That'll be difficult."

"Aha!" the tall man cried, finding the frequency he wanted. The screen flickered into life, the letters "CNN" appearing at the bottom. He spun around again to face her.

"You've been traveling with us for a couple of years now, relatively speaking," he said. "In our travels, have you heard anything about the major news stories on Earth in the two years after you left?"

The young woman frowned.

"Well, I've heard about 9/11, of course," she said. "That was such a major historical event that there was no avoiding it, like Pearl Harbor or the Paris Rock. And I know enough by now about the perils of changing history not to try to prevent it – if you ever manage to get me home," she added, glancing dubiously at the console.

"Quite, quite," the tall man muttered. "I thought I would show you something else, something you may have missed."

On the screen, a group of bright, burning objects streaked through a daytime sky. A commentator spoke somberly in an American accent.

"What is that?" she asked. "A meteor shower?"

"Only really big meteors are visible in daylight," the other man commented.

"They're not meteors," the tall man said. "That is the wreckage of the space shuttle _Columbia_, which disintegrated on reentry, killing all seven astronauts."

His two companions fell silent. The image on the screen changed to a group of seven photographs of smiling men and women.

"When did this happen?" the woman asked.

"February 1, 2003."

"That's seventeen months after 9/11," she said, her stock-trader's mind quickly calculating. "Was this an act of terrorism, then?"

"No, although that was the first thought of many people," the tall man said. "One of the astronauts – what was his name? Ilan? Yes, Ilan Ramon – was from Israel, so the people of that era were afraid the shuttle had been sabotaged or shot down by radical Islamic terrorists."

The scene on the scanner had shifted again to show a mission control center. Scores of men and women were sat at computer consoles, presumably working out what had happened to _Columbia_.

She frowned. Although she had grown used to travel through the space/time vortex, the thought of conventional space travel still made her uncomfortable. It reminded her of the tragic circumstances under which her own travels had begun.

"An American space shuttle?" the other man asked. He was – literally – a fugitive from the 1960's, and so the space shuttle was ahead of his time, but he had apparently heard of it in his travels. "Didn't those start flying in the early 80's, and finish around 2010?"

"Yes, there were five of them in all," the tall man said. "_Challenger_ exploded during liftoff in 1986, and _Columbia_ was destroyed in 2003. The others were called _Discovery_, _Endeavour_ and _Atlantis_."

She noticed that he looked even more somber than she would have expected, as though he also was being reminded of a bad memory – perhaps one more specifically connected with the space shuttle fleet? But the lecture continued.

"_Columbia_ was doomed not by terrorism, but by a piece of foam insulation that fell off the big external fuel tank during launch. It pierced the tiles of the orbiter's heat shield, allowing hot gases to penetrate the shuttle during reentry."

The television image had changed back to the pictures of the seven astronauts. The other man stared at them, stroking his stubbly chin.

"That Indian woman is good-looking," he said. "Wasn't there a beautiful female astronaut killed on the _Challenger_, too?"

She glared at him, not sure whether to be embarrassed, offended or darkly amused.

"You're probably thinking of Judy Resnik – a deft hand with a manipulator arm if ever I saw one," the tall man said reflectively.

"You met her?" the other man asked.

"Oh, very briefly. It was one of my more forgettable adventures, otherwise I wouldn't remember it. For some reason I was having a long discussion about space with my companions, almost as though we were quizzing each other, and –"

"Hang on a minute," the other man interrupted. "I understand about not preventing 9/11, because that had major historical consequences. But why shouldn't we prevent this? How much impact on the history of space travel can the loss of one shuttle have?"

"You'd be surprised," the tall man said reflectively. "Keith Robbins, the first man to set foot on Venus, went to Rick D. Husband High School, named for the commander of _Columbia_. Would he have made the choices he did without the example of a fallen hero?"

There was a strange flicker in his eyes as he said this, almost as though he might be making it up to put them off. If so, she wasn't surprised. She knew his passion for preserving the timelines. At times he acted like he was the only person left in the cosmos attempting to do so. And perhaps he was.

She knew for herself that if she ever got home to 2001 it would be difficult to resist sending anonymous e-mails to NASA, or even to the Columbia astronauts, warning them of the danger of falling foam. She would feel guilty about not doing it. But after seeing the dangers of changing history, she would feel even more guilty about doing it.

Anyone who tried to prevent a tragedy might cause a greater one. That was why most people were lucky in not knowing the future. But she no longer had that luxury. And she knew that one of her friends had borne the burden of knowledge far longer than he himself could remember.

She would someday return home a changed woman, she knew. And she sometimes wondered if her two companions could ever go home.

The three travelers stood side by side, gazing at the continuing reports on the scanner screen.

**VI**

Ozma gazed out at her people from the balcony of the palace.

A large crowd had gathered in the last hour. She had ordered the Guardian of the Gate and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers to walk up and down the streets of the city, announcing that Princess Ozma had an important address to make. The people knew from the expressions on the faces of the Soldier and the Guardian that the news was sad. The citizens of the Emerald City were usually happier than the people of any other city on Earth, but this crowd was silent and solemn, gazing up expectantly at their girl Ruler.

Ozma was a fairy princess with wondrous powers of magic, and she had long ruled the world's greatest fairyland with wisdom, love and courage. But time could not touch her, as it did not touch her people, and she was still a little girl. Her lip trembled. For a moment she could not think of what to say. Then she spoke, calmly and clearly. She did not raise her voice, and yet she could be heard by all.

"People of Oz," she said. "I believe you have guessed that I have sad news for you today, but it is not as sad as the news I gave you seventeen months ago. My news is of the deaths of seven people – not all of them Americans, but all close to the hearts of the people of the United States, our sister nation in the Great Outside World.

"Today the space shuttle _Columbia_, the flagship of NASA's fleet, broke apart on reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard."

A visible and audible wave of sadness passed through the crowd.

"These seven brave human beings were Rick D. Husband, the shuttle commander; William C. McCool, the pilot; Michael P. Anderson, the payload commander; the three mission specialists, David M. Brown, Kalpana "K.C." Chawla, and Laurel B. Clark; and Ilan Ramon, the payload specialist and the first person from Israel to fly in space."

For half an hour Ozma spoke, telling her people something about the background of each astronaut, the experiments they had performed in space, and the possible causes of the disaster. She emphasized that it did not appear to be the result of terrorism. Finally she said:

"I know that you are as sad as I am today. The crew of _Columbia_ will be remembered always, not only by their families, friends and colleagues, not only by the people of the United States, but by people far away in other realms of magic and imagination, people some may believe do not exist. We, the people of Oz, will remember _Columbia_. And as there is no death in Oz, so, too, the memory of _Columbia_ and her crew will never die."

A hush fell. The people of the Emerald City stood before her, reluctant to return to their homes. Slowly, very slowly, a few people on the edges of the crowd began to leave.

Ozma looked up. The sun shone brightly in the flawless sky of Oz, and its rays were reflected by the ten thousand emeralds of the city to an almost blinding brilliance. But beyond the scattered light of the sun, beyond the thin envelope of air that girdled the world, Ozma's fairy vision could see the ancient stars shining in beauty and in peace.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters who appear in this story. The Oz books by L. Frank Baum are in the public domain. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are trademarks of the Walt Disney Company. _Peanuts_ is copyright United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Superman and Wonder Woman are trademarks of DC Comics. The Eighth Doctor Who and his companions Fitz and Anji appear in _Doctor Who_ novels published by BBC Books.


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